This invention relates to a vehicle windscreen cleaner and more particularly to a vehicle windscreen cleaner having a partially open container for containing water-soluble, cleaning and/or rinsing agent, preferably in a solid form, the container having means to attach the container releasably in position at a point in front of a vehicle windscreen.
The words cleaning and/or rinsing agent are used in this Specification to mean any suitable detergent or anti-smear agent that may be applied to a vehicle windscreen to improve visibility through the windscreen.
Windscreen cleaners of the kind spcified above are as a rule releasably attached to the windscreen wiper blade, and use a comb-shaped applicator to transfer the cleaning or rinsing agent, which may be released by rain or splashes, or other water applied to the windscreen, from the container to the windscreen. The cleaning and rinsing agent then acts to dissolve and release layers of dirt and grease and protein-containing coatings from the windscreen and eliminates smears which spoil visibility during driving.
It has been proposed to provide a windscreen cleaner in which the cleaning and rinsing agent can be transferred to the windscreen without causing wear or stressing of the surface of the screen and without scratching the screen. In this proposal the container for the cleaning and/or rinsing agent is attached, at a distance from the vehicle windscreen, by attaching elements neither to a moving part of the windscreen wiper, or to a stationary part of the vehicle, so that the slipstream generated when the vehicle moves along can directly or indirectly flow into the inside of the said container, through its open side, scavenging the cleaning or rinsing agent and thus entraining drops of the agent in the slipstream, and causing the drops to impinge on the windscreen. The only mechanical connection of the container to parts of the motor vehicle is constituted by the attaching elements. The special advantage of this arrangement is the elimination of a mechanical applicator, which, in previously known windscreen cleaners was the cause of both wear and scratches on the surface of the windscreen. The Application of the entrained drops is performed uniformly and automatically, and the drops are always generated during the periods in which the windscreen wiper must be actuated to remove moisture deposited on the windscreen, since moisture deposited on the windscreen is also deposited on the cleaning and/or rinsing agent. The cleaning and rinsing agent is distributed over the whole width of the windscreen firstly by the action of the windscreen wiper and additionally by the action of the slipstream, due to the inclined curved nature of the windscreen.
In prior proposed cleaners the container for receiving the cleaning and/or rinsing agent took the form of a trough, open on one side, which was filled by the manufacturer with a pasty or solid cleaning and/or rinsing agent. The inside of the container had projections for retaining the pasty or solid cleaning or rinsing agent in place. In the prior art windscreen cleaners it was a relatively laborious operation to refill the trough with the concentrate of cleaning and/or rinsing agent. For instance, the trough of the windscreen cleaner had to be released from its mounting, which might be on the windscreen wiper blade, and either a new block of solid cleaning and/or rinsing agent had to be inserted in position or a generally pasty concentrate of the agent had to be distributed uniformly in the trough, smoothed, and more particularly forced tightly in to the inner corners of the trough. Hitherto, as a rule, people using these prior proposed cleaners have avoided these operations, and instead have substituted a fresh windscreen cleaner, filled by the manufacturer with the cleaning and/or rinsing agent, instead of re-filling the trough of the old cleaner. Moreover, the projections provided in the trough for retaining the rinsing agent are effective only to a limited extent, since they must not completely close the open side of the trough. For this reason, in the prior art containers, the cleaning agent tends to be washed out of the container as lumps or pasty masses before it has become completely used up. Thus not all the cleaning and/or rinsing agent is used, and some of the agent is washed.